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Index

Armenia

The Urartu Civilisation

Victory for Independence

Artashisian Dynasty on the Armenian Throne

Armenia caught between Rome and the Arsacids

The Acceptance of Christianity

Defending Christianity

Armenia Under the Bagratouni Dynasty

Cilicia - the New Armenia

Armenia Under Turanian Rule

The Renaissance or the Resurrection of Armenia

The Eastern Question

Russia in the Caucasus

The Armenian Question

Battle on Two Fronts

Tsarist Russia Against the Armenians

The Revolution of the Young Turks and the Armenian People on the Eve of World War I

The First World War

The Resurrection of Armenia

Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918

- Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918

Eastern Armenia

Western Armenia

"The Fateful Years" (1914-1917)

"Hopes and Emotions" (March-October, 1917)

The Bolshevik Revolution and Armenia

Transcaucasia Adrift (November, 1917

Dilemmas (March-April, 1918)

War and Independence (April-May, 1918)

The Republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia

The Suppliants (June-October, 1918)

In conclusion

Soviet Armenia

The Second Independent Republic of Armenia

Epilogue

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The Cultural and Scientific Life of Armenia and Armenians During the 20th century

The Armenian cultural renaissance of the 19th century fostered several important Armenian cultural personalities, contemporarily and well into the 20th century.

The composer ethno-musician Komitas, the father of modern Armenian music, was one of the greatest of these Armenian artists, and came to be the symbol of the Armenian Genocide. Soghomon Soghomonian was born in 1869 in Kutais. He became an orphan at an early age and in 1881 was sent to Etchmiadzin to study, where he mastered Armenian liturgical songs and researched Armenian folklore and spiritual music. At the end of his studies in 1895, he received the title of Vartapet (celibate priest) and took the name of Komitas. In 1896, he left for Berlin where he studied aesthetics at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University. He was one of the first musicologists to become a non-European member in the International Musical Association, which was founded in 1899 in Berlin. Komitas wrote over 3,000 songs in Armenian, Arabic, Kurdish and Persian and laid the ground for the modern Armenian divine service, the Patarak. He also gave concerts in Paris, Geneva, Bern, Constantinople, Venice and Alexandria. Apart from his great influence on clergy music, Komitas was the most important source of the renewal of Armenian folklore music.

Komitas was among the hundreds of intellectuals who were arrested by the Turkish authorities on April 24, 1915, the day which marks the start of the Armenian Genocide. He escaped death throug the efforts of the US ambassador in Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, and the Turkish poet, Emin Yudakul, who admired Komitas' work. Tragically, however, the Armenian Genocide left irrevocable wounds, psychological as well as physical, on Komitas, from which he never recovered. He stopped composing and, eventually, working at all. Later he was transferred to a mental hospital in Paris, where he spent the rest of his days, dying on October 22, 1935. His ashes were carried to Yerevan and were buried in the Komitas Pantheon, a cemetery devoted to Armenian intellectual greats. The work he accomplished is monumental. What he could have accomplished, had he escaped the horrors of the genocide, are beyond the powers of imagination..

The composer Aram Khatchatourian is another giant in Armenian culture. Khatchatourian was born on June 6, 1903, in a suburb of the city of Tbilisi. Despite early signs of musical talent, he did not come into contact with the musical world until he was 19 years old, studying in Moscow, where he eventually graduated in biology at the State University. At the same time he caught up on musical knowledge and became one of the best students at Gnesin Music School and was entitled to play at the student concert in the Small and Major Halls in the Moscow Conservatory. His first published composition, "Dance", for violin and piano, showed the style of the composer: improvisation, variation in techniques, and strains of oriental influence. His most famous work is the Gayaneh ballet (1942), with the celebrated "Sabre dance", one of the most frequently played pieces of our time; followed by the Spartacus ballet (1945). He died on March 25, 1978, and was buried later in Yerevan, in the Komitas Pantheon. His statue embellishes the front of the Opera building in Yerevan.